Blue Ridge ESOP Associates provides the highest quality third party administration and recordkeeping services for your employee stock ownership (esop) and 401(k) plan. Our experienced administrators handle all recordkeeping and reporting requirements, including Internal Revenue Code compliance testing, individual participant recordkeeping, preparation of Forms 5500 and 1099-R, trust accounting for the ESOP Trust, and combined plan testing. We will assist you in preparing for repurchase obligation, inform and advise you concerning new laws and regulations, as well as provide guidance in dealing with non- compliance issues. As a full-service TPA, we also offer employee communications services to help your employees fully understand and appreciate the benefits of their ESOP.

Our friendly, client-oriented service includes the following:

Plan Administration & Compliance
Blue Ridge provides on-going assistance to your staff on any plan related questions and will assist in monitoring compliance with federal regulations governing qualified retirement plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (ERISA), and under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, as well as other regulations that affect the operation of your plan(s). We will evaluate your plan to assist your company and its professional advisors in complying with federal tax law. Such requirements would include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:

• Annual Additions Testing
• Nondiscrimination Testing
• Top Heavy & Prohibited Allocation Testing
• Diversification & Minimum Distribution Requirements
• Reporting & Disclosure (Form 5500 and related Schedules)

Employee/Participant Processing & Recordkeeping
Blue Ridge maintains records for all employees who work for the client, including those not eligible to participate in the plan, with respect to breaks-in-service, hours worked, dates of birth, dates of hire and compensation histories.


Allocations & Recordkeeping for Plan Accounts
Blue Ridge allocates all employer and employee contributions, shares released (for leveraged ESOPs), forfeitures and trust earnings, as well as accounts for distributions and diversification. We track cost basis and share price history for employer stock acquired by the plan and maintain necessary participant accounts which must be tracked separately. Individual participant statements may be designed to the client's specifications if desired.

Accounting
Blue Ridge will assist the trustee/custodian with the review and reconciliation of all trust transactions, including trust earnings, purchase and date of plan assets, leveraged ESOP share release calculations, plan distributions and determination of realized and unrealized appreciation. Financial statements prepared include Statement of Net Assets Available for Benefits and Statement of Changes in Net Assets Available for Benefits for the Trust.

Distribution Policy and Forms
Blue Ridge can help you formulate a distribution policy for your ESOP, based on company cash flow and expectations for the share value over time as well as a number of other factors. Once the policy is accepted, we will provide custom tailored forms for the ESOP to use when making distributions to terminated participants or to active participants who have chosen to diversify their investments or take advantage of a special in-service distribution rule.

Participant Voting Instructions
Voting of company stock by ESOP participants occurs either because the situation is one in which pass-through voting is required by law or because the plan sponsor has voluntarily extended the voting privilege to ESOP participants. In either case, the voting is required to be confidential and is better processed by a third party. Blue Ridge will assist in the preparation of voting instructions, collect and tally the votes and provide a confidential report of the results to the plan trustee.

Full Service Outsourcing

Consent to Electronic Distribution or Required Communications
Blue Ridge will distribute and collect forms necessary to comply with electronic distribution of required communications and the E Sign provisions allowing electronic delivery of participants’ signatures.

Required Communications to Participants
Blue Ridge will distribute all forms necessary to comply with Department of Labor regulations on required communications to participants.

Distribution and Diversification Payments
Blue Ridge will create forms, send them to participants, collect and verify choices, prepare trustees’ report, locate missing participants and mail checks, leaving your payroll and HR staff free from these tedious and time-consuming tasks.

Dividend Payments
Blue Ridge will create forms, send them to participants, collect and verify choices, prepare trustees’ report, and mail checks to those shareholders electing to receive payment.

Beneficiary Election Processing
Blue Ridge will prepare, distribute and process all forms necessary to allow participants to elect eligible beneficiaries, and will maintain electronic copies of all forms submitted.

1099-R Processing
Blue Ridge will prepare IRS Form 1099-R for participants who have received distributions from the ESOP, file them electronically with the IRS, and maintain electronic copies.

1099-DIV Processing
Blue Ridge will prepare IRS Form 1099-DIV for participants who have received a pass-through dividend from the ESOP Trust, file them electronically with IRS and maintain electronic copies.

Lost Participant Search
Blue Ridge will use the Accurint® system to perform a lost participant search and provide you with the results.

Employee Communications Assistance
Blue Ridge encourages each client to communicate its ESOP benefit in a manner suited to its individual corporate culture. It is a well-known fact in the benefits field that a company profits from its benefits expenditures in direct proportion to the degree their employees understand and realize the value of those benefits.

Every ESOP company has a unique opportunity to maximize the value of its ESOP benefit if the ESOP is communicated properly to employees. At the very least, the ESOP should be communicated as an excellent benefit, one which gives employees a "piece of equity action." In its ultimate form, ESOP employee communications can show employees the connection between their jobs and the financial well being of the company, e.g., the share value of the stock in their retirement accounts.

Blue Ridge can help you decide your objectives with regard to employee communication, set an action plan and help you implement the plan from year to year. A good plan will also include procedures for monitoring the effectiveness of the program.

Consulting Services
Consulting is available on special topics such as compliance and design issues, repurchase obligation planning and employee communications.

If you would like us to contact you to tell you more about our services, visit our Proposal Request page.

If you would like to know what kinds of questions people ask us, see our FAQs page.

Access Your ESOP Online
ESOPConnection™ allows access to ESOP certificate information via a secure web server. Participants can log in and view their individual certificate information, download printable copies and connect to a hyper-linked glossary of terms about their certificate. Administrators can view and sort all participant information including passwords, census data, site usage and more.

Each site may be customized to your individual ESOP structure and graphical requirements. Your ESOPConnection.com site is a great way to promote your ESOP by adding easy access to employee communications and general ESOP information.

For more information and a demo of this product, visit ESOPConnection.com.